


Seeds

by humancredentials



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2015-01-28
Packaged: 2018-03-09 12:36:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3249929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/humancredentials/pseuds/humancredentials
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You’re here, Mulder, she thinks. Regardless of what they’ve taken away, you’re still here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seeds

**Year One.**

It’s five weeks after Christmas. Five weeks after losing her father. She’s finally found the strength to take down the tree.

Mulder had teased her about it three days ago when they’d spent too much time in her living room, pouring over a case file. He inspected it as he does everything else, with a trained eye and an endless curiosity for even the most mundane of things.  

"You going to leave this thing up all year, Scully?"

_Yup, all year, she thinks._

He didn’t know, Dana, she’d had to remind herself. He didn’t know that he’d recited word for word some of the last words her father had ever spoken to her. She’d stiffened imperceptibly, thankful that his attention to a random ornament meant that he didn’t see her furiously blinking back the hot tears that threatened to fall. 

_No use crying about it, Starbuck, he’d always told her. Crying’s never solved anything for anybody._

"No, just haven’t gotten around to it. I’m taking it down this weekend," she’d told him as if that had been her plan all along. As if she hadn’t spent the last five weeks staring at this tree as if it was the enemy, as if she was preparing for battle against it, as if she didn’t go to sleep every night berating herself for not being able to do something as simple as this. 

So here she sits, cross legged on her living room floor, surrounded by boxes that will hold her memories for another year, assuming she’ll even want to dig them out again when the time comes. She packs them carefully, doesn’t blink back the tears this time as she wraps the glass ornament her parents had given her when she’d graduated medical school. What would the Captain think of his daughter now?

She removes the skirt from around the base of the tree, folds it neatly, smiles when an errant sunflower seed drops onto her lap. Proof of Mulder’s investigation.

**Year Two.**

She’s released from the hospital and when he takes her home, her apartment feels strange. It’s been months, so the crime scene tape is long gone. The blood she knows must have been on carpets and tabletops has been cleaned. Her window’s been replaced. She feels strange, as if this isn’t her actual home, as if she’s meant to be somewhere else. But she settles in anyway.

Her mother’s been here, she can tell. Her fridge is stocked and someone’s watered her plants and she knows that wasn’t him. He stays with her for three days, despite the amount of eye rolling and annoyed sighs it earns him. She’s secretly grateful, doesn’t actually want to be alone, and her mother asks too many questions. He just lets her be in her silence, doesn’t push her to talk, doesn’t expect anything from her at all, really. He’s simply glad she’s alive. That she came back to him.

When he leaves and she’s alone in her apartment for the first time, her own nervous energy is almost too much for her to handle. She’s not usually like this. Her hands ache to do something, so she plays with her necklace, runs her fingers through her hair, picks up the phone to dial his number but hangs up every time. She isn’t returning to work for a few more days and she’s getting restless, so she pours all of her energy into cleaning her already spotless apartment. 

She spends hours on her hands and knees, scrubbing the floors of her kitchen and bathroom. She changes the already clean sheets on her bed, washes already clean clothes that haven’t been worn in weeks, organizes already organized cabinets. She vacuums her living room, imagining the blood on the carpet, washing out the invisible stains. She rearranges the pillows on her sofa, finds sunflower seeds in the cracks of the cushions, evidence of his nervous late night snacks.

The phone rings and she knows it’s him. She is, again, grateful for his intrusion. 

**Year Three.**

He won’t stop calling her. 

She’s lost track of how many times it’s been. She’s taken to simply keeping the phone close by so she doesn’t have to go running when it inevitably rings with his predictable voice on the other end of the line, telling her she better come down there. 

She’s running out of explanations that will get her out of making this trip. She’s also running out of things to do that will  _stop_ her from making this trip. She is completely — and she’ll never admit this to anyone should anyone ever ask — bored out of her mind when he runs off without her. She isn’t sure when she became this person, this person who gets a little jealous at being left out of the trespassing onto government property field trips, but here she is.

She’s given her recently acquired roommate a flea bath, she’s eaten almost an entire carton of ice cream, she’s read Breakfast at Tiffany’s for what must be the tenth time, she’s cleaned her gun, she’s watched bad television and eaten a mediocre salad and now she’s waiting for the phone to ring again.

The next morning, she hears about Bambi and life changing epiphanies about praying mantises and she can’t believe she’s about to do this, but she starts to pack a suitcase. She’s gotten quite good at it, at getting up and leaving at a moment’s notice. She takes pride in how organized her packing is, she never forgets anything regardless of how quickly it’s done. 

She grabs a snack in the form of a breakfast bar from one of her cupboards before she leaves and stops to wonder when she started stocking sunflower seeds in her own apartment. She doesn’t have time to contemplate the odd intimacy of that gesture, so she pushes it to the back of her brain. There are more pressing matters at the moment.

Killer cockroaches, Mulder, really. 

**Year Four.**

She can taste the blood.

She wakes up and she can taste it. It’s poured from her nose, all red and angry, and dripped into her mouth as she slept. She doesn’t panic anymore, doesn’t raise her hand to her face to gather the evidence of her mortality on her fingertips to see for herself. She simply reaches for the drawer of her nightstand, now well stocked with tissues, and wipes it away. 

When the bleeding has stopped - only momentarily, of course, because it will never  _truly_ stop - she rolls out of bed and makes her way through her quiet apartment to her bathroom. She wets a washcloth with warm water, dabs it beneath her nose, attempting to get rid of the seemingly ever present stain on her skin.

She suddenly feels nauseous, dizzy, needs to grab onto her sink in order to keep standing. She gets a glimpse of herself in the mirror, looking older than her thirty two years. Her hair and eyes have lost their vibrancy and her thoughts go to him, what he must see in her when he looks at her now. Perhaps he sees a walking disease, another girl he’ll eventually lose and spend his life yearning for, if he survives it. She suspects he won’t. 

When the nausea passes and she can safely release the grip she’s had on the porcelain, she brushes her teeth to get the metallic, sick taste out her mouth and pads back to bed. She isn’t able to sleep, she’s rarely able to once the cancer has woken her up in the night, and she tosses and turns. 

She aches for the comfort of the sterile hospital hallway a few weeks ago, the warmth of his embrace, his breath in her hair and his lips on her forehead, trying to kiss the cancer away. She attempts to keep the determination she told him she had, but in the middle of the night when she’s all alone in her dark bedroom, it becomes increasingly difficult to fight the good fight.

She reaches for the phone, presses his number on the speed dial without thinking. She doesn’t bother looking at the clock, she knows he’ll be awake. 

"Mulder," he answers, urgently, as if he knew it was her but he was bracing for bad news. 

"Mulder, it’s me," she whispers and her voice is weaker than she intended it to be. 

"Scully," he says, not as a greeting, but just as a statement of fact. She’s Scully and she’s alive and he can hear her.

"I can’t sleep."

She feels a little silly, like a child asking someone to read her a bedtime story, but she’s beyond worrying about looking weak at this point. It doesn’t matter. Everything’s changing and everything’s ending and if it all ends while he’s whispering nonsense into her ear over the phone, then that’s not an entirely bad note to leave on.

If she lives through the night, he won’t mention it in the morning. They’re good like that.

So he talks to her, tells her the ridiculous premise of something he’s watching on television. He swears it’s a documentary and she reminds him that documentaries are supposed to be based on fact and not fiction and he argues with her and she’s thankful that he does.

She falls asleep to the sound of his voice and the occasional cracking of a sunflower seed between his teeth.

**Year Five.**

She can’t get the smell of fire out of her hair. 

She’s showered, changed, showered again and she swears she can still smell it on herself.

They witnessed the apocalypse tonight and he hasn’t spoken a word to her about it since. They stood in the middle of their world, watched as it all came crashing down around them, and not a single word was uttered between the two of them. She isn’t sure what there is to say when there’s literally nothing left but charred paper and blackened walls. She wonders how many more losses he can endure, how many things he can stand being ripped away from him before he truly cracks.

She’d leaned on him, more for his support than her own, and he offered nothing in return. He didn’t embrace her the way she expected him to, didn’t even seem to register her presence when she pressed her cheek to his chest. His heartbeat was normal, his skin was warm, his breathing soft and quiet. His rage, for once, perfectly controlled. It was as if he was asleep standing up, unable to process or acknowledge their lives in ashes beneath their feet.

They made their way back to her apartment. She didn’t ask him to come over, but she was the one who drove and he didn’t strike up a protest when she was clearly heading to Georgetown. He’s declined the offer of a shower and clean clothes, silently shook his head at her suggestion that they talk about this.

She joins him in silence, tired of hearing her own voice.

"It’s over, Scully," he finally says, his voice still thick with smoke, and she doesn’t ask him to elaborate on what "it" is, because "it" is probably everything and she’s not entirely ready to accept that. There’s such confidence in his tone that she knows he believes his words.

She chews on her fingernails, a nervous habit that hasn’t made its presence known in her life since med school. She feels as uncertain and naive as she did then. She pulls her fingers out of her mouth, puts on a brave face because they can’t both be defeated. They can’t both be broken. She’ll be strong enough for the both of them.

He must suddenly be hungry, because before she realizes he’s even moved, he’s pacing in her kitchen, searching through her cupboards. He sees a bag of unopened sunflower seeds, picks them up, turns back to look at her and gives her a genuine, surprised smile. She shrugs almost sheepishly.

_You’re here, Mulder, she thinks. Regardless of what they’ve taken away, you’re still here._

He pries the bag open and she’s sure they will survive. 

**Year Six.**

Rob and Laura Petrie. 

She’s having a hard time remembering why she actually not only agreed to this assignment, but suggested it to Mulder in the first place. It’s her birthday and she’s spending it dressed up in some bizarre sweater set and skirt combination and her hair has waves in it that it usually doesn’t. And Mulder’s wearing pink.

He’s walking around like he’s having the time of his life and she’s doing her best not to slap that stupid look off his face.

It’s their first evening in the Falls of Arcadia, and she wonders how she ever thought that one day she’d live in a place like this. All structure and rules and clean lines. Did she ever truly think this was her or was she simply told often enough that this is what she wanted and she believed it? Thank goodness for divine intervention in the shape of a dingy basement office and this bizarre force of a man with her. What she would have missed had she chosen a life like this.

They’ve taken notice of the almost too clean rooms, have documented everything they possibly can tonight, and are now sitting on their living room floor because their furniture hasn’t been delivered yet and won’t be until tomorrow morning now because it’s past 8pm and if a delivery truck showed up in their driveway at this time of night, Win Shroeder would have a massive coronary and she doesn’t feel like dealing with the aftermath of that.

She just ate pizza off a paper plate with her fingers and Mulder’s leaned up against a wall, spitting sunflower seeds onto the previously all too clean hardwood floor. She makes a face when he looks up at her, daring her to comment.

"If I divorce you, do I get half of the basement?" she asks.

"You already have half of the basement."

"No, I don’t, I have a poorly lit area with counters and a sink and I have no place to sit."

"Scully, is Arcadia really the place to rehash the second desk argument? I don’t think any of the men here are your type."

He regrets the words before they’re out of his mouth and even moreso when he sees her wince at them. He meant it to be funny, but it came out mean. They’ve been snippy with each other for the last several weeks, since the embarrassing showdown at the Gunmen’s over Diana, really. Perhaps this wasn’t the best time to take this assignment. 

His jaw clenches and he clears his throat in the way that he always does before he’s about to nervously change a subject or lighten a mood.

"If you kill me, though, you get everything," he offers.

"Everything?"

"It all goes to you, Laura. The basement, the files, my couch. My fish."

"That doesn’t sound like a very good deal, Rob."

"I’d include the video collection but we both know that’s promised to Frohike."

"I guess I’ll keep you around then," she shrugs. "You’re clearly worth more to me alive than dead."

He spits another seed onto the floor with that infuriating, lazy grin of his. 

**Year Seven.**

It’s still new, falling asleep with him in her bed. 

She wonders if she’ll ever get used to this after so many years without it. 

While it’s new, it’s not necessarily strange. It isn’t strange that occasionally after work, they’ll take separate cars to the same destination. It’s usually her apartment, it’s cleaner and more comfortable though she has a soft spot in her heart for his place. 

It isn’t strange that he keeps a few more changes of clothes here now, a suit or two hanging in her closet. It isn’t strange that he has an entire shelf dedicated to him in her medicine cabinet. It isn’t strange that she has way more take-out menus pinned to her refrigerator than she ever had before and it isn’t strange that she now keeps beer in there. 

But it’s still so new, the way he climbs into her bed when he’s done watching baseball highlights. The way he wraps his arms around her, buries his nose in the nape of her neck, kisses the scar there. It’s new to do normal things like read in bed with him. Her with her medical journals, him with his random articles about Bigfoot or UFO hot spots or sea monster sightings. 

It’s new that her arguments about those very things are silenced with persistent kisses, new that his tongue licks the freckles on her skin while she tells him exactly why mermaids don’t exist, new that he laughs when she loses her train of thought and gives up the fight that she never really cared about anyway. Sure, Mulder, mermaids exist. Just keep doing  _that_.

He leaves in the morning, back to his apartment to pack for a trip she doesn’t want him to take, and it’s new but not strange that she finds sunflower seed shells in her sheets when she goes to do laundry. 

She makes a mental note to chastise him about this when he gets back from Oregon in a few days.

**Year Eight.**

She buried him this morning. 

She stood there, hand on her belly full of baby, and watched as people around her who didn’t care about him in life pretended to care about him in death. Her mother and Skinner were the only people besides herself that had any right to their grief, who had any idea what kind of loss this was and she was sick with anger.

She wanted to yell at all of them. They’d all called him names both behind his back and to his face. They’d laughed him out of board meetings and investigation task forces, they’d stared as he walked the halls of the Hoover building, willing him to go back down to his basement lair where he belonged. They’d undermined him, ignored his brilliance, excluded him and now they stood here, pretending to feel a great loss. 

She goes home to her empty apartment, assures her mother that she’d really rather be alone and that she’ll call her later and  _no, honestly Mom, I’m fine._

She goes home alone because she can’t stand the feeling of the eyes on her, the ones that watch her and seemingly wait for her to break down, the ones that treat her like the grieving widow she feels like she is. She doesn’t bother removing her shoes or her jacket, simply walks through her dimly lit apartment and sprawls out on the bed she used to sleep in alone but now feels far too big for simply one person. 

She crawls under the covers, needing a break from the relentless cold.

There are no silly magazines on her nightstand, no baseball highlights playing in the living room, no talks of mermaids, no stolen kisses and no sunflower seed shells in her sheets. Her life is deafeningly silent.

She thinks of a name for her baby.

**Year Nine.**

"What do you miss?"

"Mulder.."

"Come on, Scully, it’s your turn."

She doesn’t particularly enjoy this game but he seems to and so she humors him. He feels the need to fill their silences these days and she’s never been one to deny him much of anything.

"Fine. I miss the everything bagels from that deli by your old apartment."

There. That’s something safe. 

When they play this, in long car rides or quiet anonymous motel rooms, the unspoken rule is that you can’t name the things you  _truly_ miss. You can’t name your mothers, your daughter, your dead sisters, your three weird friends. You definitely can’t name your son and the way his chubby little fingers grabbed at your hair or the way he had his father’s eyes and they’d look at you like they knew something was missing. Definitely can’t name that.

So she comes up with innocent things she misses. High heels, tailored suits, bubble baths. She misses flukemen, mothmen, vampires and mutants. Her little yappy dog. The other day she told him she actually missed his leather couch and he hasn’t stopped making fun of her since.

"Your turn," she reminds him and he glances at her.

"I miss the basement. I miss walking into the unknown with you. I miss my badge and my gun and my partner."

Nine years in and here he is, still breaking the rules. Even after all this time.

"I’m still your partner," she reminds him, pretending it’s the sun that’s bothering her eyes. He nods, gives her a half hearted smile as he shifts his attention back to the road.

"What  _don’t_  you miss?” he asks, popping a seed into his mouth with the hand that’s not on the wheel. 

"I certainly don’t miss finding sunflower seeds all over my apartment."

"Liar," he teases and this time his smile is genuine.

_Liar, she thinks._

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Scully continues to find sunflower seeds in her apartment when cleaning.
> 
> I took this prompt and meant to keep it simple, but it got away from me a bit and turned into this. A little glimpse into moments throughout nine years.


End file.
